Friday, May 16, 2008

In-Progress In Charlotte: Craftsman Trucks On SPEED

The featured event of Friday at Lowe's Motor Speedway will be the Craftsman Truck Series race.

Krista Voda returns to the Truck Series when she hosts The Set-Up at 7:30PM. This thirty minute show features Voda and the two series pit reporters, Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander. Voda presents a pre-race show that is almost the exact opposite of The Hollywood Hotel.

She talks with the team members, owners and drivers in this series as though they are friends or even family members. The tone she single-handedly set for this show has made the Truck Series one of the most TV viewer-friendly in NASCAR.

At 8PM, she hands-off to Rick Allen who will call the action in the race. Allen will be joined by veteran Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip in the booth. Dunlap and Alexander will continue their pit road reporting duties.

The Truck Series on SPEED is presented in a very simple style. The production team concentrates on the racing, and allows the stories to play-out naturally in the event. The graphic package looks very familiar, but everything else about this telecast is produced by SPEED.

The Trucks should put on a good show, with the battle between the Cup Series regulars who are entered in this race raging with full-time Truck Series competitors like Ron Hornaday and Jack Sprague.

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looks like they found the one shot of the grandstands that makes it look as if there are actually people AT the race. i'll be interested to see if the crowd picks up at all -- once they past concert traffic (thanks, anon 8:15!)

you know what i like about watching this race -- aside from the actual racing? clean presentation, not a ton of technical toys being trotted out ad nauseum, good shots of actual racing going on. it can't be easy to cover other stories when the leader is running away with the race with 60 to go but speed has done a great job telling the rest of the story. thanks to tonight's team so far.

whoa, wait a minute! why is the #83 cup pit crew handling the #51 truck tonight? i'm confused. is it common practice for a cup pit crew to handle a truck? and from a different owner? can someone explain?

well, this will be an interesting post-race interview with busch, doncha think? sure looked like one of "them racin' deals" to me.and jd, i agree about the tight shots being used to avoid showing the "crowd." that last high overhead shot was breathtaking in showing just how empty the place is tonight. sad.and, before i forget, i thought reut did a fine job in the booth.

newracefan: agree in re: the red bull team having a tough night with the truck pit stops. but is it "common practice" to have cup teams do pit crew work for trucks? that seems . . .counter-intuitive to me. at best. i mean, pitting a truck just HAS to be different than pitting a cup car. i can see cup and n'wide but cup and truck? just another thing that makes me go "hmmmmm."

Makes me wonder what the crowd will be like Saturday night. It's too bad these Friday night Truck races can't get better crowds. In my opinion the Trucks on Friday night definitely makes for good television.

mike said...Makes me wonder what the crowd will be like Saturday night. It's too bad these Friday night Truck races can't get better crowds. In my opinion the Trucks on Friday night definitely makes for good television.

well, i'm a believer! we've made plans today to go to dover for the n'wide qualifying, cup practice and truck race on friday and -- heresy of heresies! -- skip the cup race! after tonight's race, i'm really looking forward to it! (of course, i'll make up for it by going to the fall dover cup race!)

Fox must have sent their old time interval system to Speed.Early in the race the system wouldn't update.The second half it was many laps behind the action.All in all, a production that needs improvement.

Agree about the graphic JD but I'll take that camera angle over others we have seen graphic or no graphic. Man I don't think I've ever seen Todd Bodine look so unhappy I might actually believe he didn't mean to wreck Ron.

Good no frils broadcast! To bad big money brings to much "show" to the Cup broadcasts. Truck races are the best, to bad I can't say the same about Cup. But Cup does bring in the big bucks. Seems backward.

His whole "Toyota can do no wrong - Everybody else is to blame" bias has got to go ...

The racing incidents with Busch / Hornaday / Bodine were proof positive of Mikey's bias ... And it seemed like at the end, Phil Parsons was joining in with Mikey on blaming Hornaday for the wreck with Bodine (even though the in-car camera's audio clearly proved that Bodine never lifted off the gas & actually was accelerating at the time) ...

Rick & Phil need to grab control of the reins when Mikey starts to go off on his pro-Toyota diatribe ...

Where was the post-race interview with Kyle Busch??

At least one time during the race, the ticker showed 38 drivers had started the race ... Guess it got confused with the ticker from qualifying ...